NSW BDM Register Change - for the worse?

Question

Hi,

There appears to have been a change in the NSW BDM search process.  As well as surname and date from/to being compulsory fields, a new field has been added to the search criteria - "District" - and it appears to be a compulsory field.  If anyone has a suggestion for how to ignore this field so that the search function will still work for the entire state, it would be appreciated.

kind regards...Nigel

Comments

You might want to edit your question and add some tags.  e.g. Australia, if NSW = New South Wales

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Thanks.

Answer 1

Hmmmmm..................it now appears to be working and the "District" is only an optional field.

Good outcome.

Comments

Good that it appears to be resolved.
Such a change would make it impossible for many searches, as we don't know the district until after we get the results, or there was no district recorded.

edited for typo

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure the district has always been there. It isn't marked as compulsory. I just searched without using the district field.

A new addition is the "I'm not a robot" field. One must tick that before you can get results.

Comments

Yes, the district was always there, but Nigel's concern was that it was (temporarily) a compulsory field.

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I noticed that addition too, although I don't know why it has been added.....the information is public and doesn't cost anything unless you want to buy a certificate

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I've also noticed that the district field in the results view has changed to a number and not a place...and there doesn't seem to be a key to let you know what number equates to which district. Very frustrating

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Numbers (or letters only) always existed for some districts, depending on the age of the record.
There is an online decoder for those records.

I just did a check and in the 1890s I got NAMBUCCA and MACKSVILLE on the records I checked.